Part of The Matrix featuring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.
Rise to Fame
He talked his way onto Apocalypse Now at 14, lying about his age to spend three years filming alongside Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen in the Philippines. That either breaks a teenager or shapes one. The 90s delivered the payoff: Boyz n the Hood, a Tony Award for August Wilson's Two Trains Running, an Oscar nomination for playing Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It, and then The Matrix in 1999. Morpheus became a cultural shorthand for an entire generation's idea of what cool looked like.
In the Spotlight
The Wachowskis cut him out of The Matrix Resurrections in 2021. He found out by not getting a call, not from them directly. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II played a version of Morpheus instead. That kind of slight would sideline most. He'd already secured himself in the John Wick franchise as the Bowery King, a role he landed by personally reaching out to Keanu Reeves after loving the first film. Coppola cast him in Megalopolis, he joined The Witcher Season 4, and signed onto Mike Flanagan's The Exorcist reboot. He isn't coasting.
Side Notes
Before the gravitas locked in, he spent the early 80s working the door at punk rock clubs in Hollywood, including the Cathay de Grande. Named after Laurence Olivier, which either explains a lot or nothing at all. He shared an apartment with Giancarlo Esposito during their New York struggling-actor years. A 2025 episode of Finding Your Roots revealed his biological father was a military man he never knew, not the man who raised him. He's also admitted, publicly, to being physically abusive in his first marriage and said therapy changed that.